


rivers/roads

by mermaidism



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love, you can't tell me the show ended any other way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7196060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaidism/pseuds/mermaidism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>how it happened</p>
            </blockquote>





	rivers/roads

It is not a flash so much as a fall.

A fall toward him, a fall she remembers because she's spent the last five years falling in his general direction. A fall toward the smell of coffee _(black and sometimes cold)_ , toward soft sweaters and strong arms _(he never let her hit the ground_ ), toward gentle hands _(tangled in yellow hair on a train car, hands that had only pulled the trigger once)._ Toward a voice, toward that voice, toward _his_ voice, _(do you love me? am i going to be alright? i trust you. you're beautiful, you're smart, you laugh at all my stupid jokes. i, Chuck Bartowski, take you to be my wife. i do. i love you, Sarah Walker. i always will.)_ She had forgotten how much she'd missed it.

Somewhere, as she is falling, she is running down a road. Behind her is the dark. Behind her is the past. There is pain there, so she runs hard and fast and the furious smack of the concrete against her feet reminds her why she is running. She is leaving something, she is leaving herself, all the broken, bruised parts of her, the cold loneliness and the disappointment of her childhood. She is leaving the Sarah Walker who never smiled, who had never seen Star Wars, the Sarah with the trust issues and the one suitcase, rootless and rigid. She is running down the road and she is smiling. She is smiling and she is crying because at the end of the road there is a man. A tall man with gentle hands and old tennis-shoes and the laugh that she loves. A man who saw the most jagged, shattered parts of her and loved her all the more for them. A man who healed them with laughter and dancing and mixtapes and family dinners. A tall man in a soft sweater who smells of coffee and who never lets her hit the ground. She is running toward the man whose name is Chuck, who is the man she was assigned to protect, who is the man who would set himself on fire if it would keep her warm, who is the man she fell in love with, who is the man she married, who is the man who is kissing her here, now, with her feet that are not running, but are buried in the sand.

She is not running, but she is smiling and she is crying. She is crying here by the ocean in the arms of the man she loves and who she remembers. She is crying because everything she had lost is pouring in like rivers, all the pain and all the happiness, the long nights and short ones, all the words and looks they ever shared with one another, every time her skin had touched his, all of it so fast she cannot catch each memory in her hands and hold it close. So she spreads her fingers and lets them all slip through; she holds him closer instead. She holds onto him like he is something she had lost forever. Because he is. Because he never will be again.

Here on the beach, he pulls away from her kiss. The sunset washes them both with red and gold.

She is not falling anymore. She is not falling, but her hands are shaking and her throat is aching and her heart is full and her face is shining with sun and tears and joy.

She opens her eyes.


End file.
